I’m taking this one on first both because it’s timely and because it’s relatively easy for me to address:

I’m the wrong person to ask.

Despite being a longtime Flickr Pro user, and (probably) holding the distinction of having the oldest unopened Flickr welcome message in existence [see below, unopened since December 16, 2004], I’m not really much of a Flickr user. I’m not a photographer, and I basically use Flickr as a convenient dumping ground that lets me visually scan my own pictures easily. While community is key to many people’s experience of Flickr, I’ve never felt part of a community there.

I genuinely have no idea what Flickr should do.

See? Short, easy answer.

But the catch, of course, is that I have some thoughts on what Flickr shouldn’t do. Or to be more precise, I have one thought on what Flickr shouldn’t do: Flickr shouldn’t try to build a better Instagram.

Yes, Flickr probably should have built Instagram before Instagram built Instagram. But it didn’t happen. Don’t try to play catch up. Flickr needs to focus on fixing the problems that kept them from building the last Instagram before they have a shot at building the next one.

It an excellent piece and I’m nitpicking here, but I was bothered by this sentence regarding Honan’s test of the activity levels around Flickr vs. other services: “Perhaps more damning than the poor showing in terms of up votes was how ignored it was in real-time. It was only even viewed a total of five times on Flickr in that first hour.”

While I don’t think Honan is suggesting that Flickr build a better Instagram, exactly, it does feel like he’s suggesting that a viable Flickr is one that’s focused on a real-time, mobile, social photo experience as soon as possible, and that sounds to me a bit like trying to take Instagram head on rather than building a better Flickr.

It’s odd to say in these mobile-first, social-always days, but maybe Flickr would be better off building from their strengths. As Honan points out, Flickr “has great privacy controls, excellent display and sharing tools, makes a wonderful archive, and, despite years of neglect, enjoys tremendous good will.” What if Flickr stays focused on the web for a little while, and accepts (or embraces) a “slow photo” mindset against Instagram’s stream of consciousness, and Facebooks stream of…well, every-fucking-thing?